You are here

Arbitrariness

Oct. 11, 2018 AP Washington’s Supreme Court unanimously struck down the state’s death penalty Thursday, ruling that it had been used in an arbitrary and racially discriminatory manner.

Washington has had a moratorium on executions since 2014, but the ruling makes it the 20th state to do away with capital punishment by legislative act or court decree. The court converted the sentences of the eight people on Washington’s death row to life in prison.

The June 8, 2015 issue of Time magazine explores the decline of capital punishment in the U.S. The author, David Von Drehle, offers five significant reasons for the drop in death sentences, executions, and public support for the death penalty in the United States: problems with the administration of the death penalty, the falling crime rate, the erosion of the justification for capital punishment, the financial cost of the death penalty, and actions of the legislatures, lower-court judges and governors that be read by the Supreme Court as signs of 'evolving standards of decency' in society," which the U.S. Supreme Court may eventually see as justification for striking down capital punishment. Von Drehle concludes, "The facts are irrefutable, and the logic is clear. Exhausted by so many years of trying to prop up this broken system, the court will one day throw in the towel."

In the Executioner's Shadow

Million Conversations

Take Action!

Donate to OADP

Common Questions

Capital punishment is legal in the U.S. state of Oregon. The first execution under the territorial government was in 1851. Capital punishment was made explicitly legal by statute in 1864, and executions have been carried out exclusively at the Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem since 1904. The death penalty was outlawed between 1914 and 1920, again between 1964 and 1978, and then again between a 1981 Oregon Supreme Court ruling and a 1984 ballot measure. Since 1904, about 60 individuals have been executed in Oregon. Aggravated murder is the only crime subject to the penalty of death under Oregon law.